Q&A:

Q: Why re-invent the wheel (Views + VBO)?
A: Views will not make it to D8 core. We need a solution for this release. Ideally this search/filter UI pattern could be re-used in future Views versions as well.

In #538904: D8UX: Redesign Modules Page there's mention of the Module Filter project. This module already provides some sanity in D7 for those of us that don't want to way till D8 before they have a modules admin page as it's meant to be. I personally install it in every setup along with Admin Menu.

One of the issues in Module Filter's issue queue is #1023252: UI should utilize Drupal 7 core more - new 7.x-2.x branch? and in that issue there was some discussion that it we should consider standardizing the filtering used in the modules page by implementing a re-usable mechanism across various admin pages. This way we'd have less duplication of code and more UI consistency.

So, it was suggested that we'd use the Instant Filter project. As it already states in the project's page it was born to address #396478: Searchable modules page since that one didn't make it in D7. So, in turn the Module filter NG sandboxed project was born that had Instant Filter as a dependency. That dependency was the main reason that the changes did not make it back to the original Module Filter project.

Should we make it one of this meta-issue's tasks to move Instant Filter in D8 core or at least re-write & implement its functionality for D8?

Which only covers the filtering part of course. Still leaves the update options to be refactored a bit. Here's an idea for that:

It goes with the idea that this should be really close to the 'Select all' checkbox. It sacrifices the 'Title' header for the titles column which is not that great a loss I think but a very specific design solution of course, which is likely to break in other scenarios.

(I'm seeing a trend where the headers for table columns are not shown at all anymore. In our application of this we'd need to rething the sortable links of course)

I like these designs too! The actions drop-down & button in table header part not so much (because it'd break the ability to sort alphabetically). Why can't we have them next to the "Search & filter" drop-down?

The following prototype combines filtering and bulk operations in a fairly clean way using styles from the new Seven style guide and not going too far away from the current implementation. I think this is a good step that we could reasonably get in to D8.

Drupal 8.0.6 was released on April 6 and is the final bugfix release for the Drupal 8.0.x series. Drupal 8.0.x will not receive any further development aside from security fixes. Drupal 8.1.0-rc1 is now available and sites should prepare to update to 8.1.0.

Drupal 8.1.9 was released on September 7 and is the final bugfix release for the Drupal 8.1.x series. Drupal 8.1.x will not receive any further development aside from security fixes. Drupal 8.2.0-rc1 is now available and sites should prepare to upgrade to 8.2.0.

Drupal 8.2.6 was released on February 1, 2017 and is the final full bugfix release for the Drupal 8.2.x series. Drupal 8.2.x will not receive any further development aside from critical and security fixes. Sites should prepare to update to 8.3.0 on April 5, 2017. (Drupal 8.3.0-alpha1 is available for testing.)

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